I don’t want to look up, but I don’t fight it. I don’t want to risk changing and forgetting. Then I am staring into the four amber eyes of Horn’s friend. They all blink in unison. It doesn’t seem fair that Horn only has one while his friend has four.
“Why would you offer sex to creatures like us?” His gaze is calculating, but not cruel. The claws at the tips of his fingers do not prick my skin. Not yet anyway. His tail curls around and brushes my leg and I can feel Horn’s tension thrum through my body by the way his grip tightens for a second.
They might be friends and allies, but there is a level of distrust between them. Because of this place or because of what they are? This world changes them, so they have a chance of survival. If so, where does that leave me? Do I change to survive or fight to hold on to who I am? And if I do that, am I succumbing to this world, anyway?
My brain hurts.
I’m filthy, half undressed and now trapped in a cave with two men, monsters, that I don’t know. They don’t know themselves either, and I’m not sure if that makes it better or worse.
“Because I want to survive.” It’s the only answer I have. “But I realize now how unfair that is.” I glance at Horn.
He holds up the hand with two human fingers. “I think the changes are reversible.”
Cat-snake grabs Horn’s hand. “Reversible? Or something else?”
“I don’t know.” Horn shrugs.
“If fighting and killing causes these changes, what did you do to undo them? Aside from the obvious.” He grins at me with a mouthful of sharp teeth. “I smelled that before you even walked in.”
Great. Now every monster who crosses my path will be able to smell that I’m whoring myself out.
And if that’s what it takes to get home? At what point will the monster be too bad and too big? And then what? All of this is for nothing.
The path I have started on is one that leads into a darkness where I cannot see. I can only react to what is put in front of me.
“I gave him a name.” It wasn’t the sex, as nothing happened the first time.
“And what name is that?” Cat-snake asks.
“Horn.” We both say. Me with trepidation and Horn with pride, like he’d forgotten what it was to be named.
“Then name me.” It’s almost a dare.
I scan his face, his four-eyes and pointed ears. But they don’t make him monstrous, not to me anyway. “Tail.”
I hold my breath, hoping that he senses some small change. Nothing happens. “Do you remember you name?”
“No. I think that is one of the first things to be forgotten.” Tail considers me for a moment. “Do you remember yours?”
Prey.
“Julie.” But it takes me a moment to grab it. Oh God, it’s already happening.
He cups my cheek. “It’s not that bad after the first few changes. It’s easier to survive. And easier not to remember.”
“What do you remember?” I whisper. I need to know who they were and how their souls were broken. I need something to focus on and if I figure out how they got this way, it might make it easier to undo the changes. If I hadn’t seen Horn’s fingers, I wouldn’t have believed it to be possible.
He pulls his hand back. “So I guess we aren’t eating her for dinner?”
Horn grins. “I already did.”
My cheeks heat.
Tail laughs, then stops. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you make a joke.”
“Can you not—”
“Not what?” his tail wraps round my waist and he pulls me closer.